Sir, In view of current controversies, your readers might be interested in the following credo by the distinguished historian professor, Sir Michael Howard, which might indeed be adopted by all historians and certainly informs our thinking at the Oscar Wilde Autumn School.
It is the business of serious historians, not to create comfortable myths, but to destroy them; to remind us that the past was not golden; that, our ancestors were not geniuses; that previous eras tolerated a degree of inequity, misery and suffering that we would find intolerable in our own societies and are shocked to discover in others; that previous generations blundered their way through problems as blindly as we do today; that historical idols had feet, not perhaps of clay, but certainly of flesh and blood" (Encounter, March 1985).
Should not all history be an act of revisionism, as we try to recover elements of the past according not only to our changing knowledge of events, but also to our changing views on what constitutes evidence and how that evidence should be interpreted? - Yours, etc.,
Director,
Oscar Wilde Autumn School,
Bray, Co Wicklow.